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The Australasian Talent Conference 2017 (ATC2017) was held at ICC Sydney, and I think we have found our new home! In comparison to past locations, it was cavernous, bright, well located and very well catered.

As per tradition, the Talent Management Leadership Summit (TMLS) is held on the Tuesday prior to main event. It was great to see such a diverse group of industries attending – Construction, Mining, Defence, Banking, Insurance, Technology, and State Government Departments were all there to learn and share. I took a couple of things away from the TMLS.

Talent leaders discussing the future of Talent Acquisition and Talent Management at the TMLS2017.

As Talent Management professionals, we make things complicated. We need to focus on simplification of our processes and systems for all stakeholders. Whether that be making an application process more efficient, automating our own processes to reduce cost or create efficiency, we need to simplify.

We need to lead by example. Too often we tell the business what and how to do things, yet in most instances we don’t practice them ourselves. Hard to influence the business when you aren’t demonstrating what you’re preaching.

The main event took place over Wednesday and Thursday (21-22 June). The sponsors floor was amazing. I’ve never seen so much interaction and engagement between delegate and vendor over my six or seven ATC main events. I managed to speak to almost all the new vendors, and they were wrapped with it. VideoMyJob, in my opinion, had the best display and engagement of the two days.

This was the first event I attended that did not have an international key note speaker. It was refreshing to put the spotlight on local talent. ATC still managed to have a larger delegate turnout than previous years. It was great to see so many of my Perth colleagues attending, and a couple of people from NZ. Without the international turnout, I was safely in bed before midnight. Well that’s my excuse.

Keynote speaker Sue Langley presenting at the ATC2017.

Keynote speakers Todd Wheatland and Sue Langley were great. They looked like they were having a blast up there, so natural and engaging. Todd talking marketing and culture, and Sue talking bias. Other sessions which stood out for me included James Gilbert from HubSpot who spoke about Inbound Marketing for talent attraction. Apparently the Sportsbet session running at the same time was also great. LiveHire drew standing-room only crowds at both World Café and their breakout session – now there’s some home grown tech doing extremely well in a crowded HR Tech marketplace.

Several sessions were heavy on data. Indeed Insights were really interesting, but then followed by conflicting data between ManpowerGroup and SEEK. Whilst I love data, the data presented is pretty much the same year in year out. Thought Manpower and Indeed missed opportunities to present case studies with clients. SEEK took on feedback from previous events and started with data before getting a panel on stage. Loved what they did here with ANZ Bank and PwC Australia.

I found I learnt more on day 2 than day 1 of ATC2017. The agenda is similar to the past few years, and personally I would like to see more workshop style sessions where more learning and networking can take place, something to work towards next year.

Passing on the innovation torch. ATC2016 Innovation Lab winner David Macciocca (left) from VideoMyJob and this year’s winner, Tony Wu from WePloy.

I love the ATC Innovation Lab. ATC continues to enable Aussie HR Tech StartUp scene grow. Perhaps we should rename it to ATC StartUp Incubator? Last year VideoMyJob won best HR Tech Innovation, this year WePloy were landslide winners. When your pitch starts off with “average time to hire is 29 days, our time to hire is 33 seconds..” the room is listening. Love what Weploy are doing and don’t just keep an eye out for them, reach out and hire them NOW. Other great technologies to check out include Revelian (gamified assessment), NVOI, TalentVine, The Social Index, and Fluent IQ.

For those international HR Tech companies looking to enter into the Australian market take note, that’s some serious competition there.

Here’s an interesting fact. I saw LiveHire a couple years ago at an ATC Innovation Lab and implemented their technology at my previous employer. I came across VideoMyJob at an ATC event earlier this year and guess what? Implemented at my current employer. I’m reaching out to Revelian for a trial, testing NVOI and when Weploy get to Perth, well you know what I’ll be doing.

If you are a HR Technology company looking to expand then I can highly recommend the ATC Innovation Lab. If you are a buyer, or delegate, make sure you go speak to the vendors and sponsors you never know where it might lead.

For me ATC2017 was a solid event. The agenda needs invigorating, but this year was better than the last couple of years in my opinion. The ATC gang do a brilliant job at connecting the ANZ Talent community, and whilst I am a little bias, a big THANK YOU from all of us.

Big shout out to HIRED for sponsoring the Talent Management Leadership Summit. Also, special thanks to ManpowerGroup Solutions for coming on board as our official ATC2017 event partner. Looking forward to working with everyone next year!

About Stan Rolfe

Stan loves all things Talent Acquisition. With over fifteen years experience gained in agency and corporate recruitment teams, Stan loves to share his knowledge and experience through his blogs and regular attendance at ATCEvents. Some of his achievements include; Recipient of inaugural AsiaPacific CandE Awards, implemented virtual reality simulation into a mining recruitment process, and helped established one of Australia’s first proactive sourcing functions. Stan has a specific interest in HR Technology and Candidate Experience.

5 Responses to “ATC2017 – Rewiring Recruitment for the Future”

Wish we’d had a chance to see the sessions so will definitely be part of the plan next year. I’m with FluentIQ and I can vouch for what you said there Stan re the value of Innovation Lab. We made so many contacts and the crowd was so supportive, it was well worth the time and cash investment to be there.

Hi Simon
Sadly no. I hosted a table at World Cafe on Growth Hacking but was up against some other great sessions. The handful of people that did come (awesome for taking the interest) were not familiar. There was one chap from NAB who spoke through his experience with inbound marketing. I got quite excited as we he spoke about SEO/SEM/PPC, A/B testing etc. Todd Wheatland touched on it.
It’s something we’re working through here at HealthEngine and hopefully will be able to put a case study together to share.
Stan